Will's Words: How William Shakespeare Changed the Way You Talk [Paperback]

When Jane Sutcliffe sets out to write a book about William Shakespeare and the Globe Theatre, in her own words, she runs into a problem: Will's words keep popping up all over the place! What's an author to do? After all, Will is responsible for such familiar phrases as what's done is done and too much of a good thing. He even helped turn household words into household words.
 
But, Jane embraces her dilemma, writing about Shakespeare, his plays, and his famous phrases with glee. After all, what better words are there to use to write about the greatest writer in the English language than his very own?  As readers will discover, the long and the short of it is this: Will changed the English language forever.
 
Backmatter includes an author’s note, a bibliography, and a timeline.*Focusing on the now commonplace words that Shakespeare introduced into the English language, Sutcliffe describes the inner workings of the Globe Theatre and the Bard’s genius. The verso of each spread presents historical facts about Elizabethan London and the theatrical tradition it spawned, with Shakespeare’s words interspersed amid Sutcliffe’s lively prose, while the recto highlights the words, explains their meanings (both original and contemporary), and cites their usage in the poet’s plays. Shelley’s meticulously detailed painted pen-and-ink drawings brim with life and convey a clear sense of 1606 London, “a bustling, jostling, clinging, singing, stinking, head-chopping, pickpocketing wonder of a city,” while still managing to individualize the personages both onstage and off. They are perfectly married to Sutcliff’s concise, humorous, fact-filled prose. While the author references the few known truths of Shakespeare’s life, the emphasis is on his once-inventive but now familiar wordlc'